After the official Apple event announcing the new iPad mini on the 23rd, a lot of people have been slightly disappointed by the fact that the iPad mini doesn’t come with a retina display. This doesn’t mean that in future there won’t be a retina iPad mini in future but here’s a few reasons as to why Apple may not have decided on a retina ready iPad mini.

First of all and perhaps the biggest issue would have been price, the mini retails at £269 in the UK ($329 in the US) which although is higher than some of the competing tablets in the market, it’s at a low enough price that it appeals to a much wider audience sporting it’s lower price tag. If Apple would have included a retina display this itself would have pushed the price up considerably, making it less accesible to people due to the higher price tag. In a years time, the screens themselves and process of making a retina iPad mini will be cheaper and therefore a much more viable option for Apple.

Due to the screen size being 7.9″, rather than the bigger 9.7″ the resolution of the screen could be lower to have the same DPI (Dots Per Inch) as the current retina iPad and therefore qualify as a retina display. The retina iPad comes with a resolution of 264 DPI compared to that of the mini at 163 DPI. However although it has the same resolution as the iPad 2, it’s actually got a higher DPI due to the smaller screen size; therefore text and images will look sharper on the smaller screen. With the resolution being the same as iPad 2 this means that there is no wait for apps to be made ready for iPad mini, all the apps that work on the iPad and iPad 2 will work out of the box with the iPad mini, making it easier for both developers and consumers.

One of the things that come with the smaller form factor, is a smaller battery. The iPad mini comes with a 16.3W battery, in a single cell design which itself takes up most of the device. If the device were to ship with a retina display it would need a much bigger battery which would mean the device would have to be either thicker, or bigger; which would affect the idea of it being ‘mini’. The mini still manages a 10-hour battery life, which the retina iPad manages with a 42.5W battery. The CPU in the mini is a dual-core, the same as the iPad 2 however the retina iPad comes with a A6X CPU, which is powerful enough to drive the retina screen, the A5 however wouldn’t be able to offer the same experience.

As with all Apple tech, each revision of a product line brings improved specs and I have no doubt that perhaps next year we will see a retina ready iPad mini, the components and technology behind the device will come down in price and hopefully there won’t be too much of a price increase next cycle.

One of the most notable issues over time with iOS device users is that after months of use the home button becomes un-responsive, it affects all iOS devices over time and can affect some more than others, generally based upon the use of the device. One way to fix it would simply to return it to Apple and get a replacement, if your device is still in warranty and they allow you to exchange it. However as it’s a mechanical part they may not replace the device itself.

A simple way that fixes the issue for most people, is something you can do yourself and all you need is your device itself. Following these simple steps will in most cases fix the problem and makes your home button a lot more responsive.

Launch one of the stock iOS applications on your device, for example the settings app.

When the app is open, press and hold the Sleep/Wake button at the top of the device until the ‘Slide To Power Off’ slider appears.

Press and hold the iOS home button. Keep the button pressed until the slider disappears and the application quiet back to the Springboard.

The home button is now re-calibrated and should be a lot more responsive.

For years people have been jailbreaking their iOS devices to run things that Apple won’t allow, whether it be apps or themes. They’ve never actively done a lot against the jailbreaking community, until now.

I’m due to take my iPhone into the Apple Store due to some hardware issues, but of course I was running a jailbroken iOS 4.3.2, so I spent 3 hours trying to restore it. It got stuck in a constant restore cycle. I tried using RecBoot, TinyUmbrella and iRecovery to try and get it out of it but it just wouldn’t work.

Turns out that Apple have now updated iTunes to check the hosts file on the computer and if there is an entry under ‘gs.apple.com’ it will put your device into a constant restore cycle. This is because some of the tools used for jailbreaking will add the ‘gs.apple.com’ entry to the hosts file to stop the local machine talking back to the server. Of course it’s simple to remove the entry and restore but for whose who don’t know about this will be stuck with a very expensive paperweight. It does rise some other issues, some people may have very large host files and therefore it will simply take too long and then iTunes will assume the device is jailbroken and put it into the constant recovery cycle.

After iTunes not wanting to restore my iPhone, I decided to use the now free, Find My iPhone service to remotely wipe my phone ready for my appointment at the Apple Store. After initiating the wipe I received an email saying it could take up to 2 hours to complete, my appointment being within the next hour didn’t help. Unfortunately I arrived late to the appointment, but my phone still hadn’t wiped. After not being seen I needed to use my phone again and it states in the email that you cannot cancel the wipe, however a hard reboot stopped the process and nothing had been deleted, within the hour that it was apparently wiping. So this displayed a massive flaw with the service to me, if a person was to steal a iOS device that was then remotely wiped, the theif could simply hard reboot the iOS device and have access to everything.

In the last few hours a big disruption in the jailbreak scene with the release of limera1n, the untethered jailbreak from geohot. That’s right the same geohot who left the jailbreak scene after he kept getting pestered by people about jailbreak releases. Over the last 6 months, geohot has been working on the jailbreak for the last 6 months. On the website, over at limera1n.com, it says that it’s unpatchable and that it will work on the iPad, iPod Touch 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G on the firmware 4.0 and above. This jailbreak is in beta and so is very messy and so MusleNerd of the Chronic Dev-Team has said on Twitter to wait for the release of greenpois0n.

The limera1n jailbreak is only currently avaliable for Windows but geohot is working on a Mac & Linux version of the software. There have been a few reported issues with the jailbreak so far such as the 3GS new bootrom not being supported. The release comes a day before The Chronic Dev-Teams release of their untethered jailbreak greenpois0n, which uses a different exploit.

Currently it’s not known what The Chronic Dev-Team will do as they have 3 options available to them, they can either: not release greenpois0n and save the exploit, release the greenpois0n jailbreak and use a second exploit or use geohot’s exploit and then possibly break the ETA of 10:10:10 10/10/10 GMT.

It seems that geohot has done thing on purpose but has released in a sense, an incomplete solution just to spite The Chronic Dev-Team and their efforts. The Chronic Dev-Team are still talking at this point and trying to come to a decision of what to do, the best decision in most peoples opinion would be for them to implement the limera1n exploit and keep the SHAtter exploit for future releases.

If your thinking of using the limera1n release please know that the iPhone Dev-Team and The Chronic Dev-Team were not involved in it’s creation and therefore any issues caused by it shouldn’t have to be fixed by them as it’s geohot’s software which he choose to release in beta. I would recommend waiting for the greenpoison release, it may take a few more days but at least you’ll know all the issues will be fixed. I’ll keep everyone updated on the happenings in the jailbreak scene, make sure to check back frequently for any updates.

Update: The Chronic Dev-Team have chosed to release the greenpois0n jailbreak tool using geohot’s exploit and not the SHAtter exploit.

Apple is set to release iOS 4.2 in November this year, however it’s an iPad only firmware and brings all the iOS 4 features such as printing, multitasking etc. to the iPad. The most interesting new feature is AirPlay, it allows you to stream music and video straight to your iPad over WiFi (with an iPad even acting as host for the new Apple TV).
As mentioned before printing has been brought to iOS 4 with the iPad using the Printer Center applet that sits in the dock and lets you manage print jobs.

Just a note normally I do a near live coverage of the events from Apple but due to prior plans I won’t be in from 6PM (London) till about 8 if not a bit later so I will still cover the event but it won’t be live as it has been at pervious events which is a shame as I’m really excited for this WWDC but I’ll still be keeping up on the events on my iPhone.